Originally Posted by Chris

Indeed … this is a bit of disappointing politicking from the Graun, who at any other time would be bleating about the absurdity of our energy market, designed as it is to pay all generators the price being demanded by whoever happens to be the most expensive (which as we all know is presently those fuelled by gas, by a country mile). The formula was intended to be a form of subsidy for renewable generators in their infancy but has become a means of profiteering thanks to the perverse (if not entirely unforseeeable) effects of the present gas price crisis.

The government’s measures are a sticking plaster, and they are indeed a ridiculous climbdown from leadership campaign pledges that obviously should never have been made, but they are not a windfall tax on renewable generators, and it helps nobody to suggest that they are.

For me, however, the single most dreadful line in the entire piece is the blatant hint at blackmail from SSE, which wants its hydro plants exempted. If they are not, SSE argues, then it might not be financially worth their while to switch them on at moments of peak demand, and there are then risks to the national grid and energy security. Translation: let us keep gouging the public or we might decide to sit back and watch the lights go off.

Despite my years of right-leaning politics, if I were a government minister in the room when that was put on the table, I’d have been presenting them with my plan to bring their business under emergency state control. And let it be known that that’s what I’d done, with all the amusing knock-on effects for their share price.